12/24/11

I am very pleased to announce the release of the Chinese edition of 'Five Wounds' by Azoth Books, Taiwan. (English first edition, by Allen & Unwin, is top left).

As well as maintaing the innovative design of the book's original layout, the Azoth edition also features a great new cover with a leather-like texture. The Chinese edition can be viewed and bought here.

The first version of the above illustration. This was originally intended to be included in the book as one of the 'plates'.

In our original illustration, as well as the annotated fencer, the image depicts a dog-like human face alongside a dog's face. We looked at the illustrations of Charles Le Brun, which compare human features to those of animals.

Le Brun's "Relation of the human face to the goat".

Le Brun created these studies at a time when it was widly believed that a person's physical features could reflect their character. All the senses can deceive the brain, including sight. 'Tricking the eyes' is necessary for any illustration.

Above are studies by Albrecht Dürer, who illustrated various annotated diagrams of the proportions of the human body.

One of my sketches of the stuffed wolf in the Barcelona Zoology museum, to be used as reference in the Five Wounds Illustrations.

'Cur's First Murder'

Jon has an earlier version of the above illustration on his Flickr with some of his comments and corrections.

In the final fencing illustration, we did not include the dog-human faces, but instead, we used collage. But, the illustration is collage made of my own drawn material intended to look like collage.

Jon sent me Max Ernst's graphic novel 'Une Semaine de Bonté' as inspiration. Above is one of Max Ernst's collages from 'Une Semaine de Bonté' made up of cuttings from various magazines and books.

An ink-blot which appears in the book. Ink-blots have always been linked to the idea of interpretation and today are related also to psychological analysis.

It took me quite a few attempts before I got an ink-blot which looked like a dog.